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TumoiKil of Ancient fanfomarlts 



CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES 



SLA \ Eli Y EXTENSION. 



ADISCOURSE PREACHED T< > THE SECOND CONGREGATIONAL 
CHURCH OF WEST WINSTED, Ct., MARCH 5th, 1854 



i; i C. II. A. B U l. K 1. E V 

; EB 'iF Till; BOSPK1 



HARTFORD: 

- OF (ASK. TIFFANY AM) COMPANY 

MDCCCLIV. 



^433 

•-2 fa 



West Winsted, March 7, 1854. 
Dear Sin : 

In behalf of a large number of persons who heard your recent sermon on the 
mora] bearings of the Nebraska Question, we request a copy for publication. 

JOHN BOYD, 
E. BEARDSLEY, 
JOHN HINSDALE, 
C. J. CAMP, 
WM. S. PHILLIPS, 
JAS. WELCH, 
« GEO. DUDLEY, 

J. R. ALVORD, 
P. II. PARSONS. 



To Messrs. JOHN BOYD and others. 

(.h.MLEMEN : 

I can not well refuse compliance with your request for the accompanying ser- 
mon with a view to its publication. The principles it advocates are, I think, just 
;iiid right, the only true basis of action for all consistent opponents of Slavery. 
With the hope, therefore, that through your aid they may reach some minds and 
thus advance the cause of Freedom, 

I remain, respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

C. H. A. BULKLEY. 
West Winsted, Ct., March 11th, 1854. 



DISCOURSE. 



Deuteronomy xix. L4. Thou bbalt not remove thy neighbour's land- 
mark, WHICH THEY OF OLD TIME HAVE SET IN THINE INHERITANCE, WHICH 

thou shalt inherit in the land that the liosd thy grod oiveth tree 

to possess it. 
Proverbs xxii. 28. Remove not the ancient land-mark, which thy 

fathers have set. 
IIosi:a v. 10. The princes of Judah were like them that remove the 

bound : therefore i will pour out my wrath upon them like water. 
Deuteronomy xxvii. 17. Cursed he he that removeth his neighbour's 

land-mark : and all the people shall say, amen. 

These passages refer to certain historical facts, while they 
impose a command and attach its penalty. When the 
Israelites possessed the promised land, each tribe received its 
inheritance geographically defined. A subdivision was then 
made into fields for every family, their limits being marked 
by stones set up at intervals instead of fences in line. It 
was easy, therefore, for one man to encroach upon tin- 
property of his neighbor by gradually removing these land- 
marks. Hence the most stringent measures were needed to 
prevent such injustice. God's curse was for him who 
encroached upon another's inheritance. It was an offense 
against which all people should testify. This was virtually 
the sin of Judah's princes. They were like them thai 
remove the bound, the ancient landmark. God had fixed 
the eternal boundaries of right and wrong, but they had 
removed them, casting away the distinctions of good and 
evil, th» claims of reason and equity. In their love of 
power and possession they had invaded the rights and 
liberties of the people, and for this, God cursed them. 



I see here a resemblance to facts in our nation's history, 
especially in those that now absorb the public mind. Our 
rulers, like Ihe princes of Judah, have too much forgotten 
ancient landmarks. Have they not often ignored eternal 
principles of truth, equity and wisdom, in their clutching 
ambition, their sectional rivalry ? Have they not transgressed 
the boundaries which God marked for them in the struggles 
of revolution and the erection of government? Nay, have 
they not even departed from the stand-point of early legis- 
lation, removing the ancient land-marks which their fathers 
have set? 

A question of deep interest now centering the nation's 
regards, prompts these inquiries. I approach it with solicitude 
and hesitation. Stronger and older intellects than mine 
have staggered at it. I said with Elihu, " I am young 
and they are very old, wherefore I was afraid, and durst not 
shew you mine opinion. I said, days should speak and 
multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a 
spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
them understanding. Great men arc not always wise, neither 
'do the aged understand judgment. Therefore I said, Hearken 
to me, I also will show mine opinion." 

That opinion will not be of constitutionalities, of enact- 
ments, of ordinances and compromises, as legal verities or 
political figments. I leave these to the makers of statute 
books and the servants of the ballot-box. Mine is a moral 
stand-point. I look through the telescope of God's word, 
to find- in a Christian atmosphere and a heavenly light those 
great stars of truth whose radiance has traveled along the 
pathway of ages and is yet unseen or but dimly revealed to 
earth. When I touch political organizations or national 
compacts, it will only be as the astronomer, who uses the 
brass and lenses and frame-work of his telescope, to fyc it 
in the direction of known stars. But here I hesitate again, 
not because 1 doubt the eternity, the truthfulness, and the 
ultimate triumph of the principles I shall Jay out and the 
conclusions to which 1 shall ccfme, but because I fear you 
are not all prepared to receive them wholly and cordially. 



They will be hard Bayinga to some. Winn then if 1 ibould 
fail to convince you? What, if even those who agree on 
the main issue and the abstracl question, should differ on 
the intermediate steps and the relative principles? It will 
not abate a jo1 from the truth! h will nol destroy my own 
confidence in my position. 

The simple question mooted, is, Shall Slavi 
tended ! Shall thai lizard-wrong creep from its charnel- 
house, cold with the damps of death-evils, and drag its slime 
over new territory in ih is fair laud.' There ii writhes and 
wriggles, that black, dirt-eating, reptile thing, scratching with- 
in, at the door of its inner-unclean and outer- whited sepnlcher, 
striving to get out into God's free lighl and crawl ovei the 
grass of a land yet unsoiled by its touch, and corrupl it- pure 
air with its noisome breath! There too it lies, thai wide, 
outspread, garnished region, emparadised like a garden of God, 
garmented with prairie-greenness, sentineled by forest-bands, 
defended by mountain-arms, and encamped between ever- 
flowing rivers. O fair Nebraska! shall the Berpenl enter thine 
Eden-fields to wither them with his poison and li\ his curse up- 
on thy sons? Shall the bondman's chain cr\i>\i thy freshest 
flowers and his blood wash out their beauty ! Shall the: 
hand turn the virgin soil for the oppressor's weal I Shall the 
echoes among thy hills be "the cries of them who reap down 
fields and whose hire is kept hack by fraud V 1 No! never, if 
remonstrances, and petitions, and testimonies of men true 
to freedom and to God may avail! No! never, if integrity 
is yet in measure left to northern men. and if prayer ma\ 
enter into the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath. 

Ancient landmarks, those eternally fixed o( God, and 
those definitely set by our fathers on righl principles, should 
not be removed. This is the Divine command. They who 
disobey it are accursed of < rod. To this lei all the people ol 
our nation say "Amen." But our ruler- — princes they would 
be and think themselves — aim at this offense and defy this 
curse. What /cads and what may check them? I! 
consequences promise or threaten? These inquirie BUggesI 
this theme. The causes and oonseqi bn< bs op Slavebi 



extension. They anticipate and would forestall the re- 
moval OF ANCIENT LANDMARKS. 

You know the latitude fixed by former legislation, north 
of which the nation's curse might not travel. You have 
read the declarations of men who would wipe out and of 
those who would retain this line. I need not, I can not, 
indeed, recount them. I purpose now only to consider the 
causes remote and immediate which, having brought on this 
crisis, may yet be checked, and to unfold the consequences 
to follow according as those causes shall succeed or fail. 

I. The causes, then, that have led and are still threatening 
to lead to Slavery extension first claim attention. I shall 
begin by briefly tracing them out as they appear remote and 
immediate, and then lay out the ground-work for that action 
which may counteract them. 

Lying far back of all legislation, are those principles of 
cupidity and ambition which more or less affect all men, and 
which survived the liberal sentiments of Revolutionary times. 
The North, active, hardy and enterprising, professing and 
striving to love God, yet unwilling altogether to say farewell 
to Mammon, consented for maritime privileges and commer- 
cial considerations to let the South retain that evil thing, 
which itself loathed and soon choked out of life in its own 
domain. The South, listless, self-indulgent and ambitious, 
presumptuously asserted as a right that which was not such, 
and which might have been denied even as a privilege. 
Then came party divisions, always stronger at the North 
than at the South, a slavish adherence to which was the test 
of political orthodoxy and the pledge of advancement. 
Base fear succeeded, with desires for national peace, leading 
to ignoble concessions. The South then finding the North 
tremulous, truckling and servile, quickened her desire for 
political supremacy, increased her assumption and gained 
new victories. 

This, in brief phrases, presents the long incubation of 
those powerful causes which at last hatched out and per- 
fected that monster thing called Compromise. The egg 



was first laid in ;i Constitution, which in its affirmations 
includes all thai is grand ami noble in political principle, bul 
which, in its negations, failed to designate Slavery as an 
unmitigated curse not to be tolerated in its compact The 

breaking of the shell was Been in the so-called M 
Compromise, by which a State which might bave been free 
was delivered over to oppression, and a large portion of I 
Territory bought by freemen and lor Freedom was consigned 
to the same doom, to satisfy the grasping cupidity and 
indomitable ambition of southern demagogues. Then, 
again, all hatched and full-fledged, this offspring of copi- 
ousness, ambition and servility, no chicken-thing, but a 
vulture with beak for blood, stepped forth, spread out its 
wing and soared over tin; free land, pouncing upon the poor 
fugitive and carrying him back to its nest of woe. Three 
steps — three long strides as with seven-leagued hoots of 
compromising legislation — have at last brought this nation to 
the edge of that sea over which it may >ail with safety if it 
shall reconstruct its shattered bark, but in which it must sink 
if it shall attempt to launch it out with so many worm- 
eaten, rotting timbers. These several compromise-, though 
they have seemed to be political necessities, have been just 
so many moral obliquities leading off from the true stand- 
point. They have been the variationsluf the magnetic 
needle, at first imperceptible and not calculated for, which 
have led the Ship of State on her voyage into the icebergs 
of the pole, instead of the central haven of the temperate 
zone. Have not all these compromises tended to lessen faith 
in the operation of true principles, in the supremacy of right .' 
Have they not corrupted public morals and deteriorated the 
national conscience? Aye! they have made expediency 
displace duty, availability exclude excellence, and power 
triumph over goodness! The ancient landmark- of civil 
righteousness which God had fixed, basing them a- it were 
on the rock of Plymouth, and those which our fathers have 
set, cementing them as with their blood, have been removed. 
Must they not be restored, if we would not incur God'i 
curse? Must not the boundaries of justice and equity be 



8 

defined once more ? Aye ! this must be done or the nation 
falls ! " The kingdom and nation that will not serve God 
shall perish. The princes of Judah, the rulers who take 
away the bounds of right and freedom, shall be deluged 
with Heaven's wrath." 

But how shall this tide be stayed? What standard is to 
be raised against the enemy's flood ? It is that, verily, which 
was raised at first, whereon was recorded the right of every 
man to "liberty, life and happiness," before any legislative 
compact was formed or any political sophistry was taught, 
limiting its application. In the earliest phases of colonial 
congresses, in the Declaration of Independence and in the 
Ordinance of 1787, all preceding any constitutional forms or 
questions and growing out of an aroused sense of justice 
and an enlarged love for humanity, we find the fundamental 
doctrines of a universal Freedom. Questions of right, of 
duty, practical and practicable, were acted upon. Expedi- 
ency, availability, fearfulness and servility had not yet been 
born. The egg of Compromise was not yet laid. Has not 
the nation removed the ancient landmarks ? It has been 
shown clearly and conclusively, I think, by one distinguished 
senator at, least, from the North, from the good old Bay 
State, that the original design and policy of our Revolutionary 
fathers and conslftutional statesmen, was the ultimate and 
entire extinction of Slavery. His statements have indeed 
been denied, but his facts have not been disproved. Back 
then to this design and policy the nation must go. There, 
at least, the North can and .1 hope will go, and there from 
that true stand-point, expound, enforce, or, if it need be, 
revise that constitution, until it can no more be claimed by 
Southern demagogues to favor not only the existence but 
the extension of Slavery. 

There is a cry going through the land which meets with 
opposition every moral movement, every word of eternal 
truth, every sentiment of heavenly birth. " Constitution- 
ality" is become the substitute and synonym for divinity. 
One might think, from hearing it sounded out as the war- 
cry and alarm-note of many, that they who framed the 



constitution were tyrants, infidels and drunkard* b it not 
true that every attempl to extend Freedom and restrict 
Slavery, to elevate Christianity and eoneci intemperance, 
finds this WOlf-howl at its heels.' "CoNSTlTl riOM ai.i it '. " 

That is the land's God — the nation's Sovereign — the people's 
idol. Well, be it so, if that involves all truth, all goodl 
all right! But if it does not, let us have something higher, 
better than this; something that takes ttfl back t" the ancient 
landmarks which God and our t'atliers have set You uk 
me if I would abrogate the Constitution ! Tell me, what I 
believe, that rightly construed, in its spirit according to the 
design and policy of its founders, it can not be made to 
admit of ordinances and compromises which enforce Slavery, 
and I tell you no! nevior! But tell me, what some believe, 
and they of the South teach, that it fosters, maintains and 
cherishes their darling treasure, then I tell yon vks! now 
and forever! The North must take the one alternative or 
the other, or else its own Freedom is lost! It must declare 
either that the Constitution admits of no compromise, such 
as has been made, extending Slavery, and stand by it to the 
death, or else allow this and throw r it overboard for the 
erection of another, framed of true principles, claiming 
universal freedom, banding men together in one brotherhood. 
You hear it argued by nearly all the selfish ones of the 
South and. too many servile ones of the North, that the 
Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. What if the 
opponents of Slavery should assert the same tact, hut on 
different and opposite, ground? Might they not maintain 
the position that the design and policy of our political 
founders and the spirit and purport of the constitution forbid 
the extension of Slavery into free territory, and that, there- 
fore, that compromise was unconstitutional, because, while 
it gave a portion of territory to be free, it put the chain on 
the other? Might they not then call for ils repeal and that 
of every subsequent act which has made slave states out ot 
free soil? The South would then be compelled to turn 
round and swallow her own words, and solemnly affirm th.it 
2 



10 

compromise to bo wholly constitutional, in order to retain 
present advantages. 

You hear very much just now of public faith. What is 
meant by this ? Does it differ in its elements from private 
individual faith? Are the principles of a national compact 
based on other grounds from those of a domestic or com- 
mercial one ? Must not truth, right, duty, conscience, support 
either? If threats, force and moral perversion have secured 
it, may not the party deluded be freed from obligation for its 
enforcement ? If a man is robbed and knows the criminals, 
but has been made by threats through fear of his life to 
promise that he will not expose them, and thus is let go in 
safety, will he not do right to break such faith as this ? 
Should he keep the offenders back from justice ? There is 
a private individual faith which it is sin to keep after there 
is a practicable way open for its rejection. There is, also, a 
public faith like this. When Herod promised the dancing- 
girl to give her whatsoever she might ask of him, even unto 
the half of his kingdom, would he not have been justified 
had he discarded his pledge by refusing to give her the head 
of John the Baptist? Were this nation to make a treaty 
forever with England to keep mutual peace, would it not be 
right for us to reject that treaty were she to unite against 
the liberties of other nations, even though such a condition 
had never been named ? There is a public faith, therefore, 
which it is a shame to preserve after a practicable way is 
opened for its renunciation ! When made in fear, in servility, 
in the sacrifice of right, truth and duty, compacts are violable. 
The true basis of all faith, public and private, is moral. 
Talk about social, personal and political rights to be regard- 
ed, which are not identical with moral rights and founded 
upon moral principles ! It is absurd, preposterous, outrageous ! 
Whence come all rights ? From God, truly ; from his law 
of nature, and from his moral code. Whatsoever comes not 
from this source lias no binding power, no worthy character. 
This defines all compromises as good or evil, for thus they 
differ. When Abraham and Lot compromised and sepa- 
rated, the one choosing the Land of Canaan, and the other 



II 

the Plains of Sodom, their agreement was just and equitable. 
I)iii Abraham would have Binned had he agreed to lei Lot 
go forth to promote idolatry. He would have been ju tiliod 
in recovering Lot's possession had he don.- this evil v. 
Webster, in the Ashburtoii Treaty of I s - IV, resigned a 
portion of the north-east to England for another portion as 
an equivalent, i1 was an equitable compromise involving do 
moral principle. When Texas was firsl granted to Spain in 
exchange for Florida, there wns no such violation of mora] 
rights. Bu1 when the .Missouri Compromise was framed, 

admitting a Slave State and allowing territory BOUth of a 
certain latitude to be entered by slaves, here was a violation 
both of natural rights and of moral principles. The South 
talks of its rights, asks the protection of its property, claims 
the privilege to carry it anywhere, at least into the Terril 
But. her rights are only political, surrendered by legislation in 
disregard of man's natural rights and moral obligations. 
What then, you say? Shall the North break away from 
these pledges, violate public faith and break up these com* 
promises? Shall she do the very thing for which she con* 
demns the South? Be not too hasty; 1 do not Bay this. 
Who suggested these pledges ! who originated these com* 
promises? The South! For whose interests were these com* 
pacts made ? For the South! Slavery did all this, free- 
dom sat by in tears with remonstrances, trembling and sail. 
Southern politicians argue now that they are not bound to 
keep the Compromise of 3 820, because the North did not 
help to make it. Well, this is the very reason why they 
should keep it. They have bound themselves, not as, to i;- 
observance! But what is the duty of northern freemen 
here? Shall they at once discard this compromise and let 
the flood-tide of Slavery swell up northward? No! this 
would be resigning a negative good lor a positive evil! 
Let the compact stand: yea, enforce its preservation while 
it protects the rest of the land from the inundation 
Slavery. Wait till the time come-, labor and pray lor it to 
hasten on, when truth shall be made more clear, humanity 
be more loved, and God more revered; when emigration 



12 

shall swell the tide of industry and of freedom, and legisla- 
tion shall be delivered from party trammels and sectional 
blindness, and then showing the iniquity, the baseness, the 
dreadfulness of such compromises, let it be seen that the 
faith which keeps them is vain, despicable, ruinous, and that 
they must be revoked! This is not practicable now; the 
means are not yet at hand to do it, When I speak of 
practicability I do not mean expediency. Expediency is a 
servile consideration of results, a cringing for benefits, a 
craving for loaves and fishes, independent of principles. It 
is the doing of evil that good may come. Practicability 
looks at the means, works for them until they are reached 
and then applies them. Its moral status is on the side of 
right and duty. The man who has slaves or is in a copart- 
nership to sell liquors, and sees the wrongfulness of this, 
may not be able at once to break up the work ; insuperable 
obstacles may prevent. But this may be his purpose, his 
moral status, and the very moment that his way is clear he 
must act his part aright. The North must do this. She 
must proclaim uncompromising hostility to Slavery; she 
must publish from her presses, her pulpits, her legislative 
halls, the true principles of universal Freedom, her determi- 
nation to make no more concessions to the South, to institute 
no more compromises for Slavery. She must instruct her 
representatives to take this stand boldly, firmly, unflinchingly ; 
she must send her good men to the caucusses and ballot- 
boxes, and exhort them to stand for truth, for Freedom and 
for God. She must tell the South that the compacts already 
made to admit Slavery into new territory or to send its 
agents over free States to trap refugees, are unholy and 
accursed, and that she will lend her energies to hasten on 
the day and perfect the means when and by which she shall 
maintain her position and principles as right and true before 
God, the nation and the world, till she has thrown around 
the South a strong cordon of liberty and built up against 
her the strongest dykes of truth ; and if the South shall erect 
a higher wall of defense, let the North send the hosts of 
Freedom, round that Jericho sounding their trumpets seven 



times, yea, seventy times seven thousand, until n- walla shall 
tremble ami tumble and Shivery be no more! 

Ah! but you tell me that all this involves violent agitation, 
terrible commotion, and threatens disruption, all of whirl, | 
to be deeply deplored: I grant it. Mut are th, 
([uences worse than those which are to follow Shivery exten- 
sion? Nay, I ask if the very efforts to this end will not 
produce these very evil results ! 

II. Ponder with me then, as the second main topic pro- 
posed, the consequences to succeed this extension of Shivery. 
and weigh them with those which may follow its prevention. 

There is that landmark — the separating line between 
Slavery and Freedom. It is an ancient landmark, a stone 
of truth and right that belongs further south, that never 
should have been brought so far north. It has been removed 
from the point where our Fathers set it. But remove it still 
further north. Let it pass over into Nebraska and Cans*! : 
yea, let it reach to Oregon — for this is the occult design — 
until it shall be stayed only by the great national boundary. 
Do all this in the name of peace, for the sake of concession, 
in the spirit of conciliation. This is what northern legisla- 
tors have heretofore done and are now doing. They profess 
to be opposed to Slavery. Yet they favor that direful 
movement which throws the bomb-shell of Slavery into the 
North, to burst with terrible sound and execution, and they 
say that they do this to prevent agitation! Ah! they arc 
only enkindling anew the flame which was lighted with the 
first compromise, which was relit with the second, and 
which has only burned in secret strength until now to 
burst out with fury. Men thought that when the Fugitive 
Slave Law was passed, the great question was settled; the 
fiend Agitation was lulled with poppies and lapped into 
perpetual sleep. But humanity in its deep water- 
stirred, though the surface settled down smooth. L 
wept silent tears; Justice whetted his sword in secret. Hut 
now, while ambitious demagogues, servile politicians and 
pusillanimous croakers are prating for Slavery and ringing 



14 

the changes on constitutionalities, compromises and ordi- 
nances, Humanity moves up to the surface, Love speaks 
through her tears, and Justice marches forth with newly 
sharpened sword ! The peace, the inertness, that flattered 
the South and encouraged its fawning sycophants at the 
North, was only apparent. It has been but the slumber of 
the volcano gathering strength for a terrible eruption. The 
red-hot stones and seething lava-tides begin to outpour. 
The advocates of the Fugitive Slave Law, the decriers of 
agitation, the croakers for peace, are gathering their harvest. 
They have sowYi the wind and they now reap the whirlwind. 
They themselves, frightened at the results of their base and 
cowardly concessions, are striving now to stay this on- 
marching Hood of evil. It is indeed encouraging to see 
men of all political parties at the North uniting to oppose 
the extension of Slavery. But it is still more gratifying to 
see those who opened the flood-gates on us, who toiled in 
the treadmill of Slavery, who riveted anew the chain of the 
bondman, now coming forward to undo their wrong. May 
God give them true repentance and keep them from future 
recreancy ! 

The signs of the times tell us that it is now too late to 
wave the wizard-wand of a false peace, to frighten with the 
incubus of agitation. The very alarmists themselves have 
become the agitators ; the men of peace once are the men 
of war now ! They prove unwittingly the evil of a peace 
evoked from a sacrifice of right. They forcibly inaugurate 
free discussion anew, shewing the impossibility of suppress- 
ing truth. Let it come, I say, this crisis of principle, even 
if it be by mighty commotion! Better the turmoil of nges, 
which will at last elaborate the truth and the right forever, 
than the stagnation of a peace which preserves a nation's 
existence to her dishonor in the corrupting forms of error 
and wrong. God does not promise any such peace. He 
will overturn and overturn and overturn until he shall come 
whose right it is to reign. When he shall come, that Son 
of God, that Herald of Freedom, he will fulfill his word: 
" Think not that I am come to send peace on earth ; I came 



\r, 

not to send peace l»ut a sword.'" Ah! he will M( iii 
with the weapons of truth, and in opposition to each other 
on the aide of Freedom against Slavery, kindred and friend . 
and the nation's iocs shall be they of its own household I 
and others may misjudge the EUgns, may deem tin- spirit ol 
the North less recreant, less cowardly, less doughfaced than 
it is. It may talk and scowl, and thru when the iniquit) if 
sealed, settle down doggedly to its necessity. The South 

imagines that this will l>e so. But 1 would not believe it! 
I dare not think it! Oh, no! men of thought, BOM of 
Puritans, lovers of Freedom, inheritors of Qod'i Truth, 
forbid that concession, forbearance and conciliation should 
go any further! You have winked at oppression in tim 
ignorance and weakness, but now, in times of know! 
and strength, strike at it. Let the blows of Heaven's battle* 
axes ring against Slavery until the hideous Bluebeard's cast le- 
gates give way. The political action of the North, hitherto, 
has been only defensive — hardly that — it has been wholly 
concessive. Henceforth it must be aggressive; aggressive 
as Truth, as Christianity, and as God are. The battle has 
begun, I trust, in right good earnest, and though defeat al 
first may follow, I pray God that submission may not 
Weak as I am, humble as my lot and my work may be, I 
am ready for the fight, not with carnal but with spiritual 
weapons. I shall deem it a special honor and privilege to 
be the obscurest private, doing good service in the rank- oi 
truth, righteousness and Freedom! It is possible that now 
the great conflict for liberty has commenced in both hemis- 
pheres, and is to be carried on, in years to come, by fon 
arms in the Eastern, by force of truth in the Western, 8 
be it! God hasten the day! God speed the right ! 

Whether, then, Slavery be checked at its present limit, or 
whether it be extended, I can not see how agitation is to be 
prevented; I can not feel that it is even to be deprecated it 
it may bring forth a true result of Freedom. What is the 
probable consequence if its present contemplated extension 
be effected? Why, it will be the death-blow to all Slaver] 
compromises! It will hasten the final if ire ! Abends the 



16 

incipient step will have been taken. Men who have no high 
sense of honor founded on natural rights, on eternal princi- 
ples — men who remove the ancient landmarks of God and 
the fathers, are the first to violate the very compacts which 
were tacitly and reluctantly assented to for their benefit. 
They made them on no grounds of right, of truth, of large 
Freedom, but on grounds of selfish, mercenary and ambitious 
nature, and by technical politicalisms and constitutional per- 
versions. As they are disposed to discard one compromise, 
they will another. Do you think they will stop short of 
the great compromise, the least objectionable, the Consti- 
tution ? I tell you no ! If they can change or modify it so 
as to make it subserve their oppressive ends, they will do it ! 
They have already assailed, with the great Nullificator at 
their head, the grand radical principle of the Revolution, of 
the Declaration of Independence, of the Constitution. They 
ignore the self-evident truth that " all men are born free and 
equal." I have no confidence in the honor, the faith or the 
integrity of Southern men, where their Slave interest is in- 
volved. It purblinds and stultifies them, until they wheedle 
themselves into the belief that their action is honorable when 
it is the most dishonorable. This is especially true of 
Southern, as it is also of Northern politicians, who succumb 
to Slavery. As a Northerner who becomes a Slave owner 
or overseer is the meanest, basest and cruelest of men, so 
the Northern politician who truckles to the Slave interest, 
becomes the lowest, vilest and dirtiest of demagogues. The 
honor and faith and integrity of the South does not shrink 
from using such tools ; they give to them the wretched work 
to do, which they are glad to have done by others. They 
arc right willing to have their roaring done by proxy, with 
an ass's bray under a lion's skin. So when a Northern poli- 
tician moves to extend Slavery by breaking compacts, the 
South at first cries out, " Infamous, horrible." It offends 
I heir sentiment. But soon they cry again, " Go on, lay on the 
lash" It does not olfend their principle. I am a Southerner 
myself by birth. But I thank God that I have breathed 
the free air of the North long enough, and learned its true 



17 



lessons well enough to discern the wanl oi tionoi a prin- 
clple a1 the South. I have seen it there in the boy, thf 
father of the man. In social life thej arc indeed noble, 
chivalric, generous, toward cadi other and thru- friei 
But it is all sentiment. They have no honoi toward their 
opponents. As a distinguished Benator did the other day, 
they will knock a man down with the but! end of a j »i ~i < •! 
and shoot at him before he lias time to draw and defend 
himself; and this they call heroism and chivalrj ; this i- 
their honor! O Honor! how many meannesses are done 
in thy name ! 

T say, then, that the South, devoid of true honor founded 
upon principle, will put an end after a while to all compro- 
mises. Men of the North, true to principle, true to Freedom, 
will end them too, but on different grounds. Having long in 
their consciences abjured such unprincipled compacts, wan- 
ing only for the fit and practicable opportunity to denounce 
them because framed upon a renunciation of right, and an 
opposition to truth, as in themselves a removal of ancient 
landmarks, they will say to the South, "Break your compacts 
then; take away every restriction you yourselves have made, 
and we arc then quits with you. Our faith can nol then !>•• 
assailed. We will take a long breath and a free one. W - 
will then declare to you that the Fugitive Slave An was 
iniquitous, unconstitutional, unendurable. We will invite 
the refugee to our free soil; we will shelter him in our free 
homes: we will love him with our tree hearts: we will give 
him a free spot of earth to stand and breathe upon, where 
the pursuer may never reach him. Nay, more than this; 
since you have "taken away the last bound, burst the Btrong 
dam that backed up your swelling tide, we will launch forth 
on your rivers; we will enter your slave factories and strive 
to redeem unto Freedom again those lair States, Missouri, 
Arkansas and Texas, once free as Territories. We will 
hem you in, drive you fo your fastnesses, bj truth, by politi- 
cal action based on natural rights and moral principles; by 
free discussion; by an unshackled press, until you -hall cast 
your idols into the gulf of the sea and cry for .piartcr! 
3 



Are wo not, I ask, fast approximating this grand issue ? 
Are not former political organizations in both sections 
breaking up, like the winter's ice from the spring-thaw 
before this one great distinctive question ? The South long 
since has done this. Every question of national bank, of 
tariff and of territory, has succumbed to this of Slavery, and 
union on this ground has ever been maintained. Why then 
deprecate the result of a united Northern action against 
Slavery ? That is what the South does for it. Shall we 
not be even with her ? I tell you this is the destiny of party. 
" Slavery or Freedom." "A free Constitution or none." 
" Union for right or separation." It can not be avoided. 
Alas ! for the day ! It will be one of clouds, perhaps of 
blood. But the clouds will break away and leave a sky 
clearer than ever ; the blood will enrich the soil of Freedom 
till it shall yield nothing but fruits of peace. I have confi- 
dence in truth ; I believe the right will prevail ; and though 
I may weep over the strife, I may yet hail the end. Still, I 
believe it will be a strife of thought and of words, of princi- 
ples and declarations, only. For the South dare not resort 
to arms. She knows that her 3,000,000 Slaves will rise 
against her. Think now, if this be not the issue to which 
the South is driving us. It is not merely the extension of 
Slavery in free territory, but its legalization in free states 
that she aims at ultimately. She asks legislative and judicial 
decisions to give her power not only to recover her Slaves 
when escaped into Free States, but to take and hold them 
there. The very moment this is done the North is free no 
more. Anybody then may go south, buy Slaves, bring 
them and keep them here. The South feels that the life of 
her peculiar system depends upon its extension, and she 
must extend it because it is her stronghold of power. 
Throw around it the restrictions of marriage, thus prohibit- 
ing promiscuous intercourse, pen it up in a narrow circum- 
ference where the resources of life are limited, and you cut 
off its growth. Ah ! it must multiply its heads to keep up 
its hydra life. Slaveholding politicians tell us sophistically 
that, by opening free territory to them, the number of Slaves 



L9 

will not be increased; thai there will be only the mon 
beneficenl diffusion of Slavery — no1 itc extension. They 

assert that the climate, soil and products of the new Jerritorv 
are not adapted to Slavery, and therefore it will not [.radi- 
cally be sxtended. Ah! they know better than this! Ii 
what they say be true, why do they then bo earnestly and 
so inconsistently strive to break down the barriers to the 
progress of Slavery ? They know, and we know, thai M 
souri in thirty years has gathered 87,000 Slaves within her 
bounds; that since the ( institution was framed, the 700,000 
Slaves of the land have- been increased to 3,400,000; and 
this increase has been commensurate with thai of B 
territory. 

I tell you the South wants just such a country as Mis- 
souri and Nebraska, with jusl such a soil and climate and 
products, to compete with the North. If she gets what Bhe 
wants, she will send forth colonies from her teeming planta- 
tions, led by her own sons and by renegades from the North. 
to possess this land. 

Why all this earnestness, then, to push on her cur-'' 
northward? Why this new crusade for Slavery/ It i> lo 
acquire complete political ascendency. The men of the 
South love power. They are trained to it from childhood 
in the family. They develop it as. to a Larger extent than is 
done at the North, they enter the army and the navy. They 
find it in the State, in Congressional halls. Their privilege 
of representation gives it to them, for they have three votes 
to cast for every five Slaves they possess. This love, this 
habit of power makes them jealous of northern strength, 
Then their oppressive system interwoven with their whole 
social fabric and the basis of their commercial prosperity, 
makes them afraid of Northern sentimenl linked to Northern 
power. They seek therefore to shackle the press, the pulpil 
and the legislator: to cover free soil. Why. if they dared, 
if they felt strong enough or could ereel a wall higher than 
that which separates China from Tartary all along their 
Northern frontier, so that no Slave could gel ever it into the 
Free States, they would dissolve the Union. They do no1 



20 

love that Union as the North does; as the end-all and the 
bo-all of Republican strength ; but as the Alpha and Omega 
of Slavery. They know that just so soon as it is broken up 
the wide gates are opened for a stampede northward of their 
three million Slaves. They desire, therefore, the other 
alternative, to keep the Union and still get the strongest 
hold of power in it, and thus rule the Free States, making 
them subservient to the Slave system. But shall this be ? 
Shall they have this foothold? Shall they be allowed to 
invade still further the rights of man? What if they as 
States legally approved of horse-thieving, gambling, polyg- 
amy, piracy and idolatry, as they do of Slavery, which is no 
better and in some respects worse than those sins? What 
if they asked to carry their principles and their property 
connected therewith into Free Territory and Free States ? 
Would the question be discussed whether it were constitu- 
tional ? Would a compromise be entered into with them ? 
No ! the universal sense of the North would cry out against 
them ! Yea, the Constitution would be thoroughly searched 
and sifted, and if the idea of extending such evils were even 
tolerated in it, it would be modified or rejected! But 
Slavery, no less than those crimes, is a moral, evil, and the 
South must not be permitted to claim or use political 
supremacy to spread its curse. 

This, then, is the moral aspect of the Nebraska question. 
It proposes to admit into Free Territory a -system which 
annuls the divine law of marriage and promotes immorality 
and licentiousness ; which fosters a domineering and oppres- 
sive spirit on the one hand and a servile, abject spirit on the 
other; which tears the child from its mother's arms and 
separates them forever; which shuts up the intellect of the 
negro in the darkness of nature or lets in only light enough 
to enlist his conscience in the service of his master; which 
sets base men to wield the lash and utter the oath over him, 
brutalizing his manhood. All this and more it does. You 
know these evils. You have heard and read of them enough 
to your heart's sickness. Though sycophants paint over and 
slaveholders justify this wrong, there it still stands, black, 



-.'I 

hideous, and damning, with ;i head of serpents, bji • 

fury, rind a hand of power, turning the coward heart to stone 
and cursing the life of the nation. Bee it then, stalking 
over the wide green prairies, sitting down bj the Bilvcr 
streams, mounting the foresl hills, occupying fields which 

the free laborer might till. There are wide plantations, 
yielding tobacco and grain: there, amid dark huts, are <"i' 
and hundreds of abject slaves, driven by base nun! Where 
arc the schools, the churches, tin; colleges for the people, the 
masses? Where arc the villages, the farm-houses, the 
social circles that bless a free land? Where is the thrift, 
the diffused knowledge, the elevated principle of Free Sfc 
Ah! let us not draw the sad picture in all its darkest hues; 
let us not make the contrast too Btrong between northern 
homes and fields and southern huts and plantations. The 
Slave power will tell us that we lie! We ourselves would 
only sicken at the truthful sight ! 

Ponder instead the moral conclusions which this question 
suggests. 

1. Mark this first as true. The curse of God is on tin 
nation removing- the ancient landmarks which Jit and tin 
fathers have set. It was from a principle of justice thai He 
announced this curse on the Israelite who encroached upon 
his neighbor's field. It was because of His truth and holi- 
ness that God threatened to pour His wrath on the princes 
of Judah who removed the bound of these everlasting 
principles. Every political compromise based upon the 
sacrifice of a natural and moral right must fall. Even 
scheme for uniting a nation by means of harmonizing con- 
flicting elements, must curse and divide it. Ii was no1 
merely the mingling of the races of Israel and ( lanaan thai 
cursed the former. It was the mingling of hostile principles 
of conflicting elements — the worship of the true God with 
that of idols. The curse of Home was thai sin- mothered 
all the abominations of the countries she subjected. Sin- 
took into her ostrich stomach all the iron vices of other 
nations, and assimilated them to herself. They vitiated her 



22 

blood. They became at last too hard for her digestion and 
nourishment. Though she grew strong awhile with them, 
yet they were the causes of her decline. Thus it may be 
with this nation. Compromise, at first her strength, may 
prove her ruin. It may so blunt the sense of justice, so blind 
the judgment of right, so deteriorate the public conscience, 
as to lead on to self-annihilation. What then shall be done? 
What stand shall we take ? 

2. Return to first principles. Go back to ancient policy, 
to divine foundations. Teach the supremacy of justice, the 
power of truth, the claims of right. Show men the evil of 
a peace founded on concessions to wrong, the folly of sup- 
pressing free discussion, the bondage of party-tests, the 
poison of political strife. If the Slave-power shall rise up 
against this moral stand, this attitude of heavenly wisdom, 
it can not prevail. It is said by Homer that in the conflict 
of the gods over the soil of Greece, the goddess of wisdom, 
Minerva, contending with Mars, the god of war, seized a 
huge rock, black, rugged and weighty, lying in the field as a 
great landmark, and flung it at him until he fell, as with the 
roar of ten thousand men. So then, if this Southern Mars 
shall meet this Northern Minerva, let her seize these ancient 
principles, and as in one landmark, one rock of power, hurl 
them at him till he falls with a death-tone! Oh! I believe 
that had such a stand been taken before, we had not now 
been bewailing the strife between the sovereigns of the land. 
I believe that were the North now to plant herself on the 
eternal foundations of right, of justice, of humanity, she 
would come forth a victor ; she would move on, a savior of 
the land, an emancipator of men who pine in servitude! 
One brief word more and I release you. 

3. The time calls Christians to prayer. Be not afraid, or 
discouraged. God can overrule and counteract all these 
evils. He commands his people to seek his power at the 
altar. Christians in other lands are praying for us, that He 
would help us free ourselves from this accursed load. Shall 



23 

we noi pray thus also ! Shall we not pray thai tho i 
tors who have taken a daring and decided stand for Freedom 
may be kept from temptation, from falling into political n 
from breathing the perverting atmosphere of Slaver) ! Shall 
wc not pray thai their words may reach thr ears and hearts 
of the whole nation and arouse it to a higher life of I 
dom; to a new hm bloodless revolution for humanity? 
Shall we not pray that they who pervert truth and trample 
down justice, and crush out manhood, may themselvt 
enlightened, enfranchised, elevated by God Himself? Shall 
wc> not pray to have all base fear taken away: all debasing 
cupidity and ambition; all abjecl sycophancy; all dema- 
gogism crushed; and that wisdom, love and equity may 
lead? Yes! so let ns pray, and the God of nations will 
rescue and exalt us and make as His own peculiar people! 



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